Self-driving car technologies such as grouping vehicles into platoons are under rapid development. In a vehicle platoon, a set of autonomous vehicles generally navigate according to a trajectory defined by a leading vehicle, which is typically manually controlled by a professional driver. Vehicle platoon eliminates the need for human reaction to sudden road events such as braking, and thereby allows a closer safety distance than human driven vehicles. Moreover, the use of vehicle platoons can reduce traffic congestion and the chance of accident, and can provide improved fuel economy to the vehicles.
While modelling and simulations have been utilised in the study of vehicle platoons, these simulations have not taken any degrading factors such as communication error or real time environment disturbances encountered by the vehicles into account. Thus, the quality and stability of these vehicle platoon simulations are not guaranteed or even impractical for real time road traffic applications. An improved simulation and control method of operating vehicle platoons is desirable.